When Donald Trump told ABC News that Iran’s next Supreme Leader “is not going to last long” without U.S. approval, most coverage framed it as a threat — an aggressive warning to Tehran’s internal factions. That framing misses the point entirely. Trump wasn’t warning Iran. He was making a public announcement of American policy to Iran’s clerical establishment, its Revolutionary Guard commanders, and whoever inside the Assembly of Experts is calculating their survival odds. The message was unmistakable: the United States intends to determine who governs Iran after this war.
This Is Regime Change Policy, Stated Plainly
The U.S. has a long history of pursuing regime change while refusing to call it that. In 2003, the invasion of Iraq was sold as weapons disarmament. In Libya, it was humanitarian protection. The euphemism has always done political work — it lets policymakers claim limited objectives while pursuing unlimited ones. Trump is doing something different. He is publicly declaring, in an ABC News interview, that the United States must approve Iran’s next Supreme Leader or that leader will not survive.
That’s not a threat in the conventional sense. It’s a policy announcement directed at the Assembly of Experts — the 88-member clerical body tasked with selecting Khamenei’s replacement. Trump is not saying: comply with our demands about nuclear weapons. He is saying: get our sign-off on who runs your country, or we will remove that person too. As Al-Monitor reported, Trump even compared his Iran intervention to Venezuela, framing it as a pattern of behavior he’s prepared to repeat.
The Atlantic’s analysis called Trump’s Iran strategy his “enormous gamble” — but the gamble isn’t that regime change is being attempted. The gamble is that saying so out loud, before any successor is even selected, somehow advances rather than undermines the objective. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi gave the obvious response: “We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people.”
The Statement Targets Iran’s Internal Factions, Not Its Government
Read Trump’s statement as intended audience, not face value. The Assembly of Experts convenes in Qom — or tries to, since AP News reported that the Assembly’s headquarters was destroyed in U.S.-Israeli strikes, and members are being actively targeted, making it unclear how they will even meet. Inside that body, factions are already running calculations: which candidate has enough legitimacy to stabilize Iran, which one is acceptable enough to the U.S. to avoid being the next military target?
Trump explicitly rejected Mojtaba Khamenei — Khamenei’s son — calling him a “lightweight.” Axios reported that Trump said he must be “personally involved” in picking Iran’s next leader. This language isn’t designed for Western audiences. It’s designed to communicate to the range of figures under consideration that some of them have U.S. backing and some of them face the fate of Khamenei.
That’s regime-change mechanics in operation. You don’t need troops in Tehran if you can shape the succession from outside by making clear which choices are survivable. New York Magazine’s analysis described Trump’s broader strategy as “pure fantasy” — but the Supreme Leader approval play is a recognizable manipulation of a succession process, not a fantasy. It’s the 1953 playbook updated for the post-Khamenei moment. The CIA removed Mossadegh through internal pressure and bought actors. Trump is attempting to constrain the Assembly of Experts through public threats and implicit survival guarantees.
Why Tehran’s Refusal Makes the Policy More Dangerous
When Araghchi says interference is unacceptable, he’s not just performing indignation for domestic consumption. He’s stating a red line that the Assembly of Experts must honor publicly. Any cleric who appears to seek U.S. approval — even tacitly — risks being branded a collaborator with the force that killed the Supreme Leader. The very act of Trump’s announcement makes a moderate, pragmatic succession harder, not easier.
AP News reported that Iranian society is divided — some celebrating Khamenei’s death, many living “between hope and fear” as the Basij maintained street presence and the state organized massive mourning rallies with crowds chanting “Death to America.” The succession is happening inside a country with a functioning security apparatus that remains intact despite the war, and where regime-change rhetoric from Washington historically strengthens nationalist consolidation rather than triggering collapse.
BBC analysis noted that Trump’s regime change bet “could be his biggest gamble yet,” and that achieving it through airpower alone is impossible without boots on the ground — a deployment no one in the administration is proposing. Jeffrey Sachs, writing in Open The Magazine, was more direct: Iran’s 90 million people and history of resisting foreign domination make external regime change “very unlikely to succeed,” and Iran will likely receive support from China and Russia that further complicates any pressure campaign.
What This Actually Means
Trump’s Supreme Leader approval statement is the most explicit articulation of U.S. regime change policy in decades. It’s not a warning. It’s a doctrine. And it has immediately trapped itself in a paradox: by saying publicly that the U.S. must approve Iran’s next leader, Trump has made any prospective successor’s survival contingent on appearing not to need U.S. approval. The Assembly of Experts cannot now select anyone who looks like Washington’s candidate without that person being immediately delegitimized inside Iran.
The history of U.S. regime change efforts — Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the 1953 Iranian coup that created the very theocracy the U.S. is now fighting — is a catalogue of tactical success and strategic disaster. In every case, removing a government was easier than replacing it with something stable. Iran in 2026 is not a country without a functioning state — it is a country at war with a state that remains operative. Trump’s announcement tells the world what the objective is. It does not tell anyone how it gets achieved.
Sources
- ABC News — Iran’s next supreme leader won’t ‘last long’ without my approval, Trump says
- Axios — Trump says he must be involved in picking Iran’s next leader
- AP News — Trump wants to be involved in picking Iran’s next supreme leader
- AP News — Some celebration, deep uncertainty in Iran after strikes and leader’s death
- The Atlantic — Trump’s Enormous Gamble on Regime Change in Iran
- New York Magazine — Trump’s Regime Change Strategy for Iran Is Pure Fantasy
- BBC — Trump’s bet on Iranian regime change could be his biggest gamble yet